今天这篇从The Atlantic 摘的，原址
【速度 1-3】
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Why Kids Want ThingsAconversation with a researcher who has studied materialism for almost 30 years When Marsha Richins started researching materialism inthe early 1990s, it was a subject that had mostly been left to philosophers andreligious thinkers. In the intervening decades, Richins, a professor ofmarketing at the University of Missouri’s Trulaske College of Business, andothers have contributed a good deal of academic research that backs up some ofthe wariness people have, formillennia, expressed about the pursuit of worldly things. Onefocus of Richins’s research has been how that pursuit begins in childhood, andin particular accelerates in middle school. That’s the time when kids, onaverage, givethe most materialistic responses to the question of what makesthem happy. In apaper published last year, Richins described how the social dynamicsof middle school can lead children to place more importance on owning andhaving things. (Movies, TV, the internet, media, advertising, and parents’ ownhabits, of course, can have similar effects.) Irecently spoke with Richins about this process, as well as the challenges, forparents, of providingcounter-programming to middle school’s codes of behavior. Theconversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity. Joe Pinsker: How does a typicalmiddle-schooler learn that materialism can help them navigate everyday life? （221 words）
计时2 MarshaRichins: I think of seventh grade asbeing the worst age of a person’s life. It’s really a fraught time, and there’sall this insecurity that kids have about, “Who am I? Do people like me? Whatkind of person am I?” So, how do we navigate that? Well, our appearance is oneof the things we navigate with. So, what does a kid see when they see anotherkid? They see the expression on their face, they see the body language, theposture, and the clothes they’re wearing. And so a kid who’s not veryself-confident in navigating this is going to maybe feel a little moreself-confident if they’re wearing the right kind of clothes rather than thewrong kind of clothes. Here we’re learning, right off the bat, that havingthings can help us define who we are. Pinsker: Can you talk a bit about what the alternative is to dwellingon physical stuff—the “intangible resources” that kids have for makingconversation, like who they are and things they’re good at? Richins: I have this hypothesis, which I’ve not really been able totest. It seems to me that if a child has certain intangible resources—maybethey play a musical instrument and they’re in the band—they would maybe developsome friendships based around that shared experience. Maybe their parents aresaying, “Wow, I’m so proud of you for sticking with band and you’re practicingyour trumpet.” This can give a child a sense of who they are beyond justpossessions, but that’s an intangible thing. So if kids have more things likeathletic skills or activities that they can talk about or form connections withfriends over those things, they can feel good about themselves through manydifferent kinds of things. And if you’re lacking other kinds of things—ifyou’re lacking intangible resources—you might want to fall back on tangibleresources. （320 words） 计时3 Pinsker: You’ve been talking about the middle-school phase, but kidsinternalize materialist messages at younger ages too, right? Richins: Yes, they do. One of my co-authors, Lan Chaplin, has done someof the definitive work with children and materialism, and she finds bigdifferences over time—it gets more pronounced right around middle-school age.For instance, she haskids make collages. She gives them words on paper and asks, “Howimportant are these things to you?” And then they put the most important thingson their collage. As the kids get to middle-school age, more and more tangiblethings get on there and a larger percent of them are actual things, as opposedto activities or other people. Pinsker: Based on your research, are there any interventions parentscan stage as their children start to put sometimes too much value on materialthings?
Richins: We don’t really know becausewe haven’t really studied interventions, but I do a lot of surveys with peoplebetween the ages of 20 and 40, and I ask them to describe who they are now andto reflect on their childhood. Now, we have to be very clear that this is avery imperfect method of getting data about people’s childhoods, because thereare all kinds of memory biases. But one of the most consistent findings is theassociation between the person’s current level of materialism and how theyperceived their parents using things when they were growing up. （244 words）
计时4 So in other words, parents who act in ways that value things,parents who make a lot of sacrifices to get a lot of things, parents who get alot of joy from buying things, parents who talk a lot about things—they tend tohave adult children who act the same way. Now, part of this is probably somebias as people recall their childhoods, but I don’t think that’s all of it. Thehelpful thing for parents here—and also the harmful—is yes, peers are reallyimportant, but our kids are watching us. Our kids are learning from us. A lotof what kids take to be normal comes from what they see us doing. Kids aregoing to learn what their relationship with products should be by looking atour relationship with products. So we can’t entirely override peers, but wecertainly can have influence in that way. Pinsker: Andfrom what I understand, that connects to the research you’ve done on whenparents offer physical things as rewards. Richins: Rewardsand punishments, yes. And those can be earned or unearned rewards. So that’sanother reasonablystrong association: Children who recall that their parents justbought them stuff when they wanted it, or who paid them money or bought themthings when they got good grades, there’s a very consistent association thatwhen these things happen in childhood, when that person is an adult, they’remore likely to be materialistic. （242 words） 计时5 And I’m looking now at what parents do when their kid’s unhappy,or upset, or they have a big disappointment—how do parents deal with that? Andmy preliminary evidence suggests that it’s something that’s learned inchildhood. The parents might say, “Oh, you didn’t make it on to the team—let’sgo out and have something to eat,” or, “Let’s go out and get you a new videogame—that’ll take your mind off it.” Well, if the parents do that with theirkids, we find that as adults, people are more likely to deal with distress inthe same way, by giving themselves a little gift. Pinsker: Hasdoing this research changed the way you parent? Richins: Iremember I started this research when my daughter was in seventh grade,actually. [Laughs] So I didn’t have the results ofthe research. But would I have done anything differently? Probably not. I neverthought it was a good idea to reward children tangibly for the things that theydo, because I don’t think life works that way—there are a lot of things youhave to do and you don’t get any reward for them. Your reward is, you get tostay alive or you get to keep your job. Idid do material punishments quite a bit, though—taking stuff away, like, “Thistoy has to go away because you were disrespectful.” That was really the onlything that worked with my daughter, who has a pretty good mind of her own. Pinsker: Andwhen you did that, and she complained, did you get to respond that it wasbacked up by the research?
Richins: No.[Laughs] I didn’t have any research then,and plus, you know, a seventh grader is not impressed by that. I played theresearch card with my daughter all the time—not necessarily with my research,but as in, “Research shows that blah blah blah.”She just got tired of hearing that. It carried no weight whatsoever. （334 words）
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发表于 2018-9-2 19:38:53
